Kjell
The boy's name Kjell has been in the national records since 1958, with 360 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 2014. About 330 Kjells are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 44.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Kjell
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 360
- Estimated living today
- 330
- Median age today
- 44
- Peak year
- 1968
- Best rank
- 2,109th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1958
How old the living Kjells are
born that year still alive today
Of the 360 babies given the name since 1958, about 330 are alive — 92 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1981 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Kjells
- Kjell Magne Bondevik (born 1947)33rd Prime Minister of Norway
- Kjell Westö (born 1961)Swedish-speaking writer and journalist from Finland
- Kjell Lindgren (born 1973)American astronaut
- Kjell Askildsen (1929–2021)Norwegian writer
- Kjell Scherpen (born 2000)Dutch association football player
- Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García (1930–2009)President of Guatemala; of Norwegian parentage
- Kjell Bäckman (1934–2019)Swedish speed skater
- Kjell Grede (1936–2017)Swedish film director and screenwriter
People named Kjell with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kjell is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1968
The most popular boys’ names the year Kjell peaked:
Kjell elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Kjell | 23,353 | 4th |
| Belgium boys | Kjell | 619 | 256th |
| Switzerland boys | Kjell | 44 | 1,066th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Kjell: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Kjell | 43 | 0.003% | 827th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Kjell | 1 | 0.000% | 902nd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Kjell: rank by region
In 2018, Kjell was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Kjell | 685 | 7 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Kjell by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 21 | 371st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Kjell among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Kjell | 800 | 1,029 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.